I've enjoyed listening to the Father Brown stories; not your typical mystery writer at all! Certainly lots of twists and turns and a bit gruesome in one or two of the tales yet those parts don't overwhelm the story. The reader has good diction but is a little too slow though not to the point that I couldn't enjoy the story.

Chesterton's Father Brown stories are somewhat disappointing if you approach them as simple mystery stories. The situations are a little artificial and even improbable. They are really thought experiments, ways of making a point about human thinking (mostly about how our ideas are usually not very well thought out and based on uncritically accepted assumptions).

The more I read the stories, the more I get out of them and I find that, unlike typical mysteries, they continue to provide more and more enjoyment even after one knows the solution (knowing the solution helps to understand the point Chesterton is making as he sets everything up for the denouement).

This reading was perfect--easy to understand, and with perfect timing, the pauses giving you time to think and absorb the ideas presented by the author.

When reading absolutely anything written by Chesterton it may be helpful to keep five things in mind:

Chesterton is always affirming his Catholic faith.

Chesterton relentlessly defends liberty and the right for as many people as possible to own the means of making a living (Distributism)

Chesterton consistently defends marriage and family.

Chesterton loves the use of paradox.

Chesterton is not above exaggerating a point, to make a point.

Having read a considerable amount of Chesterton, I feel confident that the Mussolini comments were yet another use of paradox. He was making a point about his own government, which affirmed liberty, yet did not always act in the interest of the common man. Also remember that Chesterton was among the earlier writers to warn about Hitler. Read 'Orthodoxy', 'Eugenics And Other Evils' and 'What's Wrong With This World' and there can be no doubt about where he is coming from.

Having said all that I must admit that the Father Brown stories are not my favorite Chesterton fiction. I much prefer his novels such as 'The Man Who Was Thursday', 'Manalive' and 'The Ball and the Cross'.

Even when not at his best, though, Chesterton is definitely worth reading.

I like Father Brown. He may let the criminals go, but they either reform, confess, or come to a sad end.

I also disagree with the first reviewer. Chesterton pretty much insults everyone, not just Eastern culture. Presbyterians, Calvinists, atheists, Christian Science - all come under his censure in some degree. And that's fine with me - he's not writing a religious or cultural tome here.

I find the stories very enjoyable and have no problem with the resolutions. They're not as deep and intricate as crime novels, certainly - and the reformation of the criminals at Father Brown's sermons to them does seem a bit forced. But if you're looking for your pet peeve, you'll probably find it... so don't bother looking and just enjoy.

The reader is good, but I find him a little slow and ponderous at times. It takes all kinds of readers to please everyone at least some of the time. ;)

I loved these stories. Very unusual mysteries with a different type of detective. Yes, he does tend to let miscreants go, but, keep in mind, Catholic priests are forbidden to share an individual's confession with others, and he does his best to either turn the evildoer towards good or persuade the criminals to give themselves up.
Sorry, I didn't see the "facism" the other reviewer mentioned.
The reader were very good also. Thank you, Brian Roberg.

I kind of liked this story, but the lead character, Father Brown, was annoying. I actually liked the secondary character, Flambeau, much better.

My grouch with the character is different from prior reviewer. I don't like the fact that Father Brown often lets the bad guys get away. To my mind, he is hiding behind his job.

The stories themselves were okay, and I also enjoyed the reader. He is an excellent reader, easy to follow and listen to. Overall, this is an average book.

But if I had my choice, I'd give this thing one star at best simply because of Chesterton's writing. Merely from the text, I was able to infer his fascist sympathies simply by listening to these stories. I subsequently confirmed my suspicions by reading up on him, and found that he was supportive of Mussolini, Franco and Portugal's Getúlio Vargas.

I didn't bother finishing the book, but I think 2/3rds is all the hearing this work deserves. "The Wrong Shape" was the story that killed my interest in the rest of the series stone dead, though I did listen to the next story while weighing whether I wanted to give up on the whole thing.

In "The Wrong Shape", Chesterton treats us to Father Brown discussing an Asian dagger:

"It's very beautiful," said the priest in a low, dreaming voice; "the colours are very beautiful. But it's the wrong shape."

"What for?" asked Flambeau, staring.

"For anything. It's the wrong shape in the abstract. Don't you ever feel that about Eastern art? The colours are intoxicatingly lovely; but the shapes are mean and bad—deliberately mean and bad. I have seen wicked things in a Turkey carpet."

"Mon Dieu!" cried Flambeau, laughing.

"They are letters and symbols in a language I don't know; but I know they stand for evil words," went on the priest, his voice growing lower and lower. "The lines go wrong on purpose—like serpents doubling to escape."

"What the devil are you talking about?" said the doctor with a loud laugh.

Flambeau spoke quietly to him in answer. "The Father sometimes gets this mystic's cloud on him," he said; "but I give you fair warning that I have never known him to have it except when there was some evil quite near."

And his "mystic's cloud" is proven to be an infallible barometer for impending evil. So let's think about what that means for a second. Father Brown is proven to be utterly correct in a context where he's just affirmed the irredeemable wickedness of all Asians and Asian culture. This is what the Nazis referred to as voelkisch racial wisdom: the prerational, instinctive, but nevertheless thoroughly correct belief in the inferiority of non-white races. If you're not a white Anglo Christian like him, then Chesterton thinks of you as a lesser being. Good news for you white atheists though, because at least you can be converted—but you'll probably become deranged by your wickedness instead.

To use Chesterton's own words against him, his stories are "mean and bad—deliberately mean and bad". The logic is weak and the resolutions don't make sense because Chesterton isn't interested in the mystery story as a literary form; he is only interested in driving home his reactionary, proto-fascist views to the reader. Father Brown, far from being the humble country curate, has a decidedly petty and vicious streak.